The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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YouTuber: Jul 31, 2004; by FactsAreUseless

evol262 posted:

Any other RAOP client may work (RAOP2 is questionably supported). stream2ip is common. I'd probably set it up as a PulseAudio sink, though.

The problem is the fact I don't want to stream all sound. If I'm in a game I want the music audio stream to go out over the network but game sound to come from the computer's speakers. I was told PulseAudio should automatically detect other PulseAudio devices and allow you to do this by design but I've not been able to read much into it.

# ? Aug 6, 2013 19:39

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# ? May 19, 2024 17:45

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

YouTuber posted:

The problem is the fact I don't want to stream all sound. If I'm in a game I want the music audio stream to go out over the network but game sound to come from the computer's speakers. I was told PulseAudio should automatically detect other PulseAudio devices and allow you to do this by design but I've not been able to read much into it.

PulseAudio is the "modern" Linux framework which lets you split your audio output with almost unlimited granularity. It can definitely do this.

# ? Aug 6, 2013 19:55

YouTuber: Jul 31, 2004; by FactsAreUseless

evol262 posted:

PulseAudio is the "modern" Linux framework which lets you split your audio output with almost unlimited granularity. It can definitely do this.

Found the "feature" I was looking for. You have to manually install paprefs from the repository to have the ability to set a few options in PulseAudio. Well I confirmed it works with my HTPC using Ubuntu + XBMC Linux but the audio was all hosed up. No luck with the Rasp Pi based OpenElec version.

YouTuber fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Aug 6, 2013

# ? Aug 6, 2013 21:38

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

YouTuber posted:

Found the "feature" I was looking for. You have to manually install paprefs from the repository to have the ability to set a few options in PulseAudio. Well I confirmed it works with my HTPC using Ubuntu + XBMC Linux but the audio was all hosed up. No luck with the Rasp Pi based OpenElec version.

OpenELEC doesn't support Pulse, apparently. You're stuck with RAOP.

# ? Aug 6, 2013 22:32

YouTuber: Jul 31, 2004; by FactsAreUseless

evol262 posted:

OpenELEC doesn't support Pulse, apparently. You're stuck with RAOP.

OpenElec does ALSA on everything but the Pi which apparently uses OpenMax according to the chat channel. I may have to switch over to Xbian or Raspbmc since using stream2ip doesn't seem to want to cooperate with the Pi's Airplay. Either I'm running the program wrong or I'm using the wrong port.

# ? Aug 6, 2013 23:20

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

YouTuber posted:

OpenElec does ALSA on everything but the Pi which apparently uses OpenMax according to the chat channel. I may have to switch over to Xbian or Raspbmc since using stream2ip doesn't seem to want to cooperate with the Pi's Airplay. Either I'm running the program wrong or I'm using the wrong port.

It's possible they're only implementing RAOP2 (Airplay over UDP), which only has sketchy support on Linux.

# ? Aug 6, 2013 23:25

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

So I'm diving head first into making Debian packages for some of the proprietary software we run (Matlab, Mathematica, etc) and... holy poo poo this is hard. Does anyone know of any tutorials for this before I dive in and have to create one myself?

# ? Aug 6, 2013 23:59

ShoulderDaemon: Oct 9, 2003; support goon fund; Taco Defender

FISHMANPET posted:

So I'm diving head first into making Debian packages for some of the proprietary software we run (Matlab, Mathematica, etc) and... holy poo poo this is hard. Does anyone know of any tutorials for this before I dive in and have to create one myself?

Read the Debian New Maintainers' Guide. Seriously, read it. It's well-written, and will teach you all the various ins and outs of packaging for Debian in a fairly sane order.

Check your packages with lintian. The warnings it gives you will help you avoid problems. You should strive for zero warnings on your finished packages.

Depend heavily upon dh for your package. In an ideal world, your debian/rules file should be this:

code:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
	dh $@

and have debhelper take care of all the messy details for you.

For example, I have an internal Debian package which just serves to install some config files. It uses that debian/rules file above, and has a toplevel Makefile containing this:

code:

build:

install:
	install -o root -g root -m 755 -d \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2/piny/www \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2/piny/secure \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2/piny/global \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2/sites-available \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2/conf.d \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/cron.weekly \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/ikiwiki/wikilist.d \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/sudoers.d \
	  $(DESTDIR)/etc/sv/git-daemon \
	  $(DESTDIR)/srv/git
	install -o root -g root -m 644 etc/cgitrc etc/piny-default.conf etc/piny-override.conf $(DESTDIR)/etc
	install -o root -g root -m 644 etc/apache2/envvars $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2
	install -o root -g root -m 644 etc/apache2/sites-available/piny $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2/sites-available
	install -o root -g root -m 644 etc/apache2/conf.d/piny $(DESTDIR)/etc/apache2/conf.d
	install -o root -g root -m 755 etc/cron.weekly/piny $(DESTDIR)/etc/cron.weekly
	install -o root -g root -m 600 etc/sudoers.d/pinyadmin $(DESTDIR)/etc/sudoers.d
	install -o root -g root -m 755 etc/sv/git-daemon/run $(DESTDIR)/etc/sv/git-daemon

clean:

All I'm doing is installing various files to $(DESTDIR), which debhelper arranges to be set to the correct location within the debian directory; I don't have to worry about any of the details involving creating an actual package. With just those files, and a scattering of {pre,post}{inst,rm} files in debian, I have a working package that builds and installs exactly as I want it. In this case, my package doesn't need to be built, and it doesn't have anything to clean, but those targets would probably be used in a more complicated package.

# ? Aug 7, 2013 00:39

hazzlebarth: May 13, 2013

FISHMANPET posted:

So I'm diving head first into making Debian packages for some of the proprietary software we run (Matlab, Mathematica, etc) and... holy poo poo this is hard. Does anyone know of any tutorials for this before I dive in and have to create one myself?

The Ubuntu packaging guide, http://developer.ubuntu.com/packaging/html/ , as well as the Debian wiki, https://wiki.debian.org/HowToPackageForDebian, provide good starting points for Debian packages. If the original sources build system (autotools, cmake or whatever) is reasonably sane, it is as easy as running dh-make inside an unpacked source tarball, adjusting debian/changelog and debian/control and get a working debian package out of it.

Of course, such a basic package will have many "lintian" errors, http://lintian.debian.org/manual/index.html, and you want to get all of them sorted out. There are a lot of places to ask for help, I recommend the "#debian-mentors" IRC channel on OFTC, http://www.oftc.net/.

I also encourage you to subscribe to the Debian-Mentors mailing list, https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/.

# ? Aug 7, 2013 12:27

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

FISHMANPET posted:

So I'm diving head first into making Debian packages for some of the proprietary software we run (Matlab, Mathematica, etc) and... holy poo poo this is hard. Does anyone know of any tutorials for this before I dive in and have to create one myself?

Ugh, packaging is my least favorite part of Debian -- it seems so insanely complicated compared to RPM/pkgbuild specfiles.

Since you're building packages for binary stuff with bundled dependencies that just goes in /opt, ignore all previous recommendations and just use fpm to create the package in one command.

# ? Aug 7, 2013 13:23

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Misogynist posted:

Ugh, packaging is my least favorite part of Debian -- it seems so insanely complicated compared to RPM/pkgbuild specfiles.

Since you're building packages for binary stuff with bundled dependencies that just goes in /opt, ignore all previous recommendations and just use fpm to create the package in one command.

It's all going in /usr/local because /opt is NFS mounted :nms:

Couldn't decide on a smilie but nms fits the best I think.

# ? Aug 8, 2013 00:25

Jan: Feb 27, 2008; The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

Is there some way to profile SQLite databases or otherwise identify bottlenecks without having source access to the application that's using it? I installed Plex Media Server on my reborn Linux all-in-one server, and scanning files is excruciatingly slow compared to when I tried it out on my workstation. All I have to go by is this debug spew in its logfiles roughly 1-2 times per second:

Aug 04, 2013 06:46:31 [0x3c560a2a700] WARN - Waited one whole second for a busy database.

I'm tempted to say the media server is badly written but that doesn't really help me with my problem. I don't think these guys have really tested their server on a kernel running security enhancements, but it could also be a dumb misconfiguration on my part.

# ? Aug 8, 2013 00:26

ZeitGeits: Jun 20, 2006; Too much time....

Hey guys, hope someone can help me with this *NIX problem I've been bashing my head against for some time now.

I inherited an AIX 6.1 NIM server on which is a fairly important data exchange file structure for our environment. A communication server connects via SFTP to the server with the credentials of a valid user on the AIX box and uploads files. On creation the files are created with a mask of 700. I need mask 750 or 770, though.

Easy change, set user's umask to 022 and edit /etc/inetd.conf, right?

code:

ftp stream tcp6 nowait root /usr/sbin/ftpd ftpd -u 007 -l

Wrong, files are still uploaded with a 700 mask. ps -aux | grep shows me, other users on the box have ftpd -u 007 -l running. Why doesn't my user have this process although the sftp connection on the communication server is set to keep alive?

Does anyone have advice where I could look for a solution?

ZeitGeits fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Aug 8, 2013

# ? Aug 8, 2013 19:39

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

ZeitGeits posted:

Hey guys, hope someone can help me with this *NIX problem I've been bashing my head against for some time now.

I inherited an AIX 6.1 NIM server on which is a fairly important data exchange file structure for our environment. A communication server connects via SFTP to the server with the credentials of a valid user on the AIX box and uploads files. On creation the files are created with a mask of 700. I need mask 750 or 770, though.

Easy change, set user's umask to 022 and edit /etc/inetd.conf, right?
code:
ftp stream tcp6 nowait root /usr/sbin/ftpd ftpd -u 007 -l
Wrong, files are still uploaded with a 700 mask. ps -aux | grep shows me, other users on the box have ftpd -u 007 -l running. Why doesn't my user have this process although the sftp connection on the communication server is set to keep alive?

Does anyone have advice where I could look for a solution?

STFP goes through SSH, not FTP. Is this SFTP or FTPS? If it's actually SFTP, you're looking at adding something like:

code:

Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server -u 022

to sshd_config

# ? Aug 8, 2013 19:48

fatherdog: Feb 16, 2005

ZeitGeits posted:

Hey guys, hope someone can help me with this *NIX problem I've been bashing my head against for some time now.

I inherited an AIX 6.1 NIM server on which is a fairly important data exchange file structure for our environment. A communication server connects via SFTP to the server with the credentials of a valid user on the AIX box and uploads files. On creation the files are created with a mask of 700. I need mask 750 or 770, though.

Easy change, set user's umask to 022 and edit /etc/inetd.conf, right?
code:
ftp stream tcp6 nowait root /usr/sbin/ftpd ftpd -u 007 -l
Wrong, files are still uploaded with a 700 mask. ps -aux | grep shows me, other users on the box have ftpd -u 007 -l running. Why doesn't my user have this process although the sftp connection on the communication server is set to keep alive?

Does anyone have advice where I could look for a solution?

1) as evol262 said, adding stuff to the inetd.conf entry for ftp will do nothing because sftp goes through sshd

2) Where are you setting the user's umask, and what is their default shell in the passwd file?

# ? Aug 8, 2013 19:57

ZeitGeits: Jun 20, 2006; Too much time....

fatherdog posted:

1) as evol262 said, adding stuff to the inetd.conf entry for ftp will do nothing because sftp goes through sshd

2) Where are you setting the user's umask, and what is their default shell in the passwd file?

drat it, what a stupid rookie mistake. In my mind SFTP somehow became FTPS :downs:

The error was in the configuration of the communications server. Changing the adapter to FTPS did indeed fix the file permissions on upload.

Still, /etc/ssh/ssd_config does contain

code:

Subsystem sftp /usr/sbin/sftp-server -u 002

the users umask has been set via smitty and the users default shell is /usr/bin/ksh. Any ideas?

# ? Aug 8, 2013 20:10

Experto Crede: Aug 19, 2008; Keep on Truckin'

I often have to connect to a server using ssh as a different user. Can I edit ssh config that I can just do a command like ssh host and have it ask for the username and password rather than doing ssh user@ipaddress followed by the password?

# ? Aug 8, 2013 20:38

hackedaccount: Sep 28, 2009

Mess around creating a "shell alias" and you can probably cook up something to save you some keystrokes.

# ? Aug 8, 2013 20:41

Jan: Feb 27, 2008; The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

Experto Crede posted:

I often have to connect to a server using ssh as a different user. Can I edit ssh config that I can just do a command like ssh host and have it ask for the username and password rather than doing ssh user@ipaddress followed by the password?

Edit ssh_config (~/.ssh/config) and add a Host entry for your server if there isn't already one, i.e.:

code:

Host bronyporn

HostName ssh.bronyporn.com
User rainbowdash

Don't have access to my own config file so I haven't actually tested that syntax, but I recall setting up something similar.

# ? Aug 8, 2013 20:46

Experto Crede: Aug 19, 2008; Keep on Truckin'

Jan posted:

Edit ssh_config (~/.ssh/config) and add a Host entry for your server if there isn't already one, i.e.:
code:
Host bronyporn

HostName ssh.bronyporn.com
User rainbowdash
Don't have access to my own config file so I haven't actually tested that syntax, but I recall setting up something similar.

Thanks, but the problem is I have to connect to this server with dozens of usernames a day (all of which usually get used once and not again), just doing it without the user makes it default to my local username. Any way I can get it prompt for the username?

# ? Aug 8, 2013 20:50

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Experto Crede posted:

Thanks, but the problem is I have to connect to this server with dozens of usernames a day (all of which usually get used once and not again), just doing it without the user makes it default to my local username. Any way I can get it prompt for the username?

Not without writing a wrapper script.

# ? Aug 8, 2013 20:55

Experto Crede: Aug 19, 2008; Keep on Truckin'

Misogynist posted:

Not without writing a wrapper script.

That's something I hadn't thought of! Might be worth trying, cheers

# ? Aug 8, 2013 20:58

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

ZeitGeits posted:

drat it, what a stupid rookie mistake. In my mind SFTP somehow became FTPS

The error was in the configuration of the communications server. Changing the adapter to FTPS did indeed fix the file permissions on upload.

Still, /etc/ssh/ssd_config does contain
code:
Subsystem sftp /usr/sbin/sftp-server -u 002
the users umask has been set via smitty and the users default shell is /usr/bin/ksh. Any ideas?

You won't get a login shell on SFTP or FTPS anyway, so the shell is irrelevant in this instance. It's likely that smitty just dumps a line in their .profile anyway, so same there.

I have no idea what your default mask is and whether or not 002 is actually wrong or right. Only you can answer that one.

# ? Aug 8, 2013 21:23

3spades: Mar 20, 2003; 37! My girlfriend sucked 37 dicks!

Customer: In a row?

Experto Crede posted:

That's something I hadn't thought of! Might be worth trying, cheers

code:

#!/bin/bash
echo -n 'Username: '
read user
ssh IPADDRESS -l $user

save as ssh.sh (chmod +x if needed) and run. It will ask for user. Make another read for ip if it changes too.

# ? Aug 9, 2013 00:06

digitalcamo: Jul 11, 2013

I'll try to be brief as possible. I'm currently learning how to program and so far, everything I've come across says you need linux if your serious about learning programs or computers in general. Why is this? I am very interested in learning linux and plan to do so. And I'm probably too ignorant in my current state of computers, but I just don't understand what makes it so great. Just thought I'd get input from people that use it.

# ? Aug 9, 2013 18:31

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

digitalcamo posted:

I'll try to be brief as possible. I'm currently learning how to program and so far, everything I've come across says you need linux if your serious about learning programs or computers in general. Why is this? I am very interested in learning linux and plan to do so. And I'm probably too ignorant in my current state of computers, but I just don't understand what makes it so great. Just thought I'd get input from people that use it.

I would say you are getting somewhat outdated advice here.
If you want to do serious programming you have to interact with the OS and the Hardware. In the olden days the interfaces given by most OSes for this were pretty bad, and really badly documented. On linux you could always just check or even change the source code, if some interface acts badly.
These days the difference has been getting smaller.

# ? Aug 9, 2013 19:25

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

digitalcamo posted:

I'll try to be brief as possible. I'm currently learning how to program and so far, everything I've come across says you need linux if your serious about learning programs or computers in general. Why is this? I am very interested in learning linux and plan to do so. And I'm probably too ignorant in my current state of computers, but I just don't understand what makes it so great. Just thought I'd get input from people that use it.

Easy availability of first-class tools. You can really do everything on Windows, and if you're writing Java or .NET there's not a good reason to write it on Linux. For the majority of scripting languages and web languages, Windows is a second-class citizen which requires using ActiveState crap, mentally jumping through hurdles about file paths (because "\" is an escape operator, so Windows paths are "C:\\", and UNC paths are worse).

This is better now than it used to be, partly from language support and partly from Windows improving semantics, but you'll find that a lot of the "cool" stuff you want to do just doesn't work on Windows because it requires source code for imagemagick to build a Ruby gem that converts images and dumps them into RabbitMQ to get wherever and... this stuff sort of works on Windows, but you need significant experience to even dodge these hurdles.

If you're doing .NET or Java, Windows away. Anything else, Linux, BSD, or OSX is a better choice (and not because source is available).

# ? Aug 9, 2013 19:39

Precambrian Video Games: Aug 19, 2002

I googled to see if there's any data available on OS usage for software development and only found this article (the report it's based on is not public and the firms' own press release is no more informative, other than that the survey was of 365 developers). Still, it confirms what I would guess, which is that Windows is still the dominant OS for development and Mac and Linux are probably close to equal. Pick a more specific industry and those numbers may change, e.g. academia is less likely to use Windows, whereas the healthcare industry still seems to have a lot of Sun crap.

If you want broad, sweeping generalizations, most Linux distributions have far more useful software development tools out of the box and infinitely more useful command line tools (awk, grep, sed, ssh/rsync), and it's pretty much all free. You can emulate most of that functionality in Windows, but why bother? Mac OS can do most (or all?) of everything Linux can, but you pay a premium for it. Windows is still by far the favoured platform for games, but I don't know much about game development so someone else can speak to that. Some developers do release Linux builds of their games, but even in 2013 Linux video drivers mostly suck and Linux's market share is so small that most game developers have no reason to care.

# ? Aug 9, 2013 20:27

Neuntausend: Sep 11, 2012; Wir werden alle sterben.

digitalcamo posted:

I'll try to be brief as possible. I'm currently learning how to program and so far, everything I've come across says you need linux if your serious about learning programs or computers in general. Why is this? I am very interested in learning linux and plan to do so. And I'm probably too ignorant in my current state of computers, but I just don't understand what makes it so great. Just thought I'd get input from people that use it.

It's as usual - you don't see how linux is great, because it isn't, exactly. Not for desktop/workstation use, that is. So you are not ignorant per se, you are just looking at what you want to work with for now. Go and watch Why Linux Sucks/doesn't Suck 12/13 (they are on youtube) if you are interested, they are qute funny but also quite true. It's somewhat ironic that Linux is very strong in every field except the one it was originally created for.

That being said, what the gentlemen above me said does hold true. In the end it comes down to what you want to do with it. Depending on the tools you are planning to use, it can make sense to just code on your target platform. .Net is very well structured, easy to utilise but for some parts, Windows only. So yeah - stay on Windows here. For everything else - if you are willing to invest some time into making your working environment fit your needs, you can do everything on a linux os.

# ? Aug 9, 2013 21:29

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

digitalcamo posted:

I'll try to be brief as possible. I'm currently learning how to program and so far, everything I've come across says you need linux if your serious about learning programs or computers in general. Why is this? I am very interested in learning linux and plan to do so. And I'm probably too ignorant in my current state of computers, but I just don't understand what makes it so great. Just thought I'd get input from people that use it.

I know you're using Python, and Python development is the main reason I run Ubuntu as my desktop OS.

Just starting out learning Python, you're not going to notice much difference. However, once you get to a certain point linux just becomes easier. The majority of widely used tools are wrote with Linux in mind first. Because of that, they work in weird ways or with caveats on Windows.

Installing libraries is a hugely easier on Linux for one reason: compiling packages. You can get compiling working on Windows, but its as irritating as hell and prone to break when you sneeze on it. With linux you can type pip install some_third_party_package, and it will compile automatically.

# ? Aug 9, 2013 21:45

digitalcamo: Jul 11, 2013

Well as a beginning Python programmer that doesn't know very much at all learn linux? And I have no idea what kind of tools I'd want or need. Didn't really know anything about tools outside of Internet Explorer, Notepad, stuff like that, if those are even considered tools or just programs.

# ? Aug 10, 2013 00:54

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

digitalcamo posted:

Well as a beginning Python programmer that doesn't know very much at all learn linux? And I have no idea what kind of tools I'd want or need. Didn't really know anything about tools outside of Internet Explorer, Notepad, stuff like that, if those are even considered tools or just programs.

You don't need it, I wouldn't worry about it unless you're just wanting to try something new.

# ? Aug 10, 2013 00:57

YouTuber: Jul 31, 2004; by FactsAreUseless

Neuntausend posted:

It's as usual - you don't see how linux is great, because it isn't, exactly. Not for desktop/workstation use, that is. So you are not ignorant per se, you are just looking at what you want to work with for now. Go and watch Why Linux Sucks/doesn't Suck 12/13 (they are on youtube) if you are interested, they are qute funny but also quite true. It's somewhat ironic that Linux is very strong in every field except the one it was originally created for.

That being said, what the gentlemen above me said does hold true. In the end it comes down to what you want to do with it. Depending on the tools you are planning to use, it can make sense to just code on your target platform. .Net is very well structured, easy to utilise but for some parts, Windows only. So yeah - stay on Windows here. For everything else - if you are willing to invest some time into making your working environment fit your needs, you can do everything on a linux os.

Linux has gotten leagues better in the past 4 years for Desktop use. I've tried Linux on and off since maybe 2005, screwing around with Knoppix, Ubuntu, Debian and others and they had poo poo functionality. Nearly everything had to be done through the command line. Nowadays you can likely use Ubuntu totally without touching the command line if you use common desktop parts. There is a wealth of applications you can download from the Ubuntu repositories for most uses. There is problems with Linux, sure. But most of that stems from it's small, if zealous in usage and development, community. Stuff like Valve taking an interest in the platform, Kickstarter adding support for Linux in nearly every game is certainly going to get the ball going on shoring up one of the achilles heels of the OS; lack of games. I feel once that problem is solved you'll see more people tend towards Linux as Microsoft works toward the Metro stuff.

Then you have curveballs like Canonical's Edge phone doing Ubuntu Convergence. That could add shitloads of people both for development and usage into the community if it's successful.

YouTuber fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Aug 10, 2013

# ? Aug 10, 2013 02:55

Double Punctuation: Dec 30, 2009; Ships were made for sinking;
Whiskey made for drinking;
If we were made of cellophane
We'd all get stinking drunk much faster!

eXXon posted:

Windows is still by far the favoured platform for games, but I don't know much about game development so someone else can speak to that.

As I understand it, Linux hasn't become popular for games for several reasons: Programming in OpenGL is harder than Direct3D, graphics drivers have to be built specifically for the kernel version/version of Xorg, installing things is more difficult, etc. But the really big problem is that X11, which pretty much everything but OS X and Android use, is hacked-together garbage. It wasn't designed to do the things modern desktops and workstations need it to do, and it really shows its age in that respect.

For many, many years, graphics card manufacturers flat-out refused to cooperate with the open source community in any way and just put out binary drivers whenever they felt like it, making it pretty much impossible to change to a better system. Now, most of the graphics cards have been reverse-engineered, and a variety of factors have led the big manufacturers to cooperate with the community more, making a change possible. Unfortunately, the replacements for X11 haven't been adopted in any mainstream system yet, and there are several competing replacements out, so it will be a while still before Linux will be able to compete on that front.

# ? Aug 10, 2013 04:13

YouTuber: Jul 31, 2004; by FactsAreUseless

dpbjinc posted:

Where exactly is everyone going on that front? Canonical are pushing Mir, Everyone else on Wayland? Are either of these projects close to replacing X or are they still stuck in the endless "soon" stage?

# ? Aug 10, 2013 04:45

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

I am actively working on Wayland support in GNOME. It's a tough, difficult transition, but it will be done at most by the end of the next year.

# ? Aug 10, 2013 04:48

Neuntausend: Sep 11, 2012; Wir werden alle sterben.

YouTuber posted:

Where exactly is everyone going on that front? Canonical are pushing Mir, Everyone else on Wayland? Are either of these projects close to replacing X or are they still stuck in the endless "soon" stage?

I actually don't know where that Mir thing came from all of a sudden and how far it is by now. For Wayland tho: from my perspective, the latter. Wayland and Weston (compositor for wayland) seem to be "mostly" done, but there's nothing yet that can run on them, really. So it's more a question of when window managers, desktop enironments and so on will be available for it. KDE has been working on that for quite a while now, and as far as I know, kwin-wayland "should" already work (somewhat), but I have yet to see proof of that. And even then, people will still want their XFCE, LXDE, xmonad, *box and what have you. I can't really see Wayland replacing X any time soon.

# ? Aug 10, 2013 10:47

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

And it won't have to. X apps are going to be around for a long time, but we can plan for the future, keep the advantages of a new protocol for new apps, and introduce a backwards compatible layer (Xwayland) for the apps that cannot port over, while getting the advantages of a new one (like the fact that your screensaver / screen lock can't kick in while you have a menu open)

# ? Aug 10, 2013 17:23

Neuntausend: Sep 11, 2012; Wir werden alle sterben.

And there's another thing: Since you are involved somewhat, do you know if AMD/nVidia are working on Wayland/Weston compatible driver blobs yet? Because in all honesty, I also can't see too many people switching to Wayland without those, and as I have come to know nVidia at least, they probably don't even care.

# ? Aug 10, 2013 18:37

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# ? May 19, 2024 17:45

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Neuntausend posted:

I actually don't know where that Mir thing came from all of a sudden and how far it is by now. For Wayland tho: from my perspective, the latter. Wayland and Weston (compositor for wayland) seem to be "mostly" done, but there's nothing yet that can run on them, really.

GTK3 and Qt5 both have Wayland support, which is most of the hurdle right there. Obviously Qt3/4 and GTK2 applications will continue to use an X translation layer of some variety.

Neuntausend posted:

So it's more a question of when window managers, desktop enironments and so on will be available for it. KDE has been working on that for quite a while now, and as far as I know, kwin-wayland "should" already work (somewhat), but I have yet to see proof of that. And even then, people will still want their XFCE, LXDE, xmonad, *box and what have you. I can't really see Wayland replacing X any time soon.

There's a lot more life left in mobile, tablets, and in-dash/in-seat systems than there is in desktop, and that's mostly what platform developers seem to be targeting. It's obvious from Canonical's plans with the Edge phone, to say nothing of stuff like Unity and gnome-shell. Power users should be able to stick with X.org and their WMs/DEs of choice for a long time.

# ? Aug 10, 2013 18:56

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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